Wednesday

Dec 31, 2008 at 3:15 AMDec 31, 2008 at 6:28 AM

LEBANON, Maine — Suzanne Carter doesn't plan on chaining herself to the barn that houses six horses at Santana Lynn Riding Stables, a therapeutic facility, when a locksmith is expected to arrive this afternoon to close up her property.

Instead, she was praying that U.S. Bank National Association officials who foreclosed on her Upper Guinea Road home and barn on one acre in September would accept her offer to pay $1,000 per month on her mortgage and allow her to carry her own property and liability insurance expenses.

Mike Dubois, a managing broker at Prudential Prime Properties Dubois Realty in Sanford, who represents the bank, said he relayed Carter's offer Tuesday afternoon, but had not heard back from them.

Carter, who has lived there 14 years and in Lebanon for 40 years, said she owes $150,000 on the mortgage.

Dubois said he will be the listing agent when the property comes on the market. Dubois said Carter's refusal to accept a cash settlement from the bank and vacate the premises has held up the potential sale.

He said Carter is one of many homeowners who have either been foreclosed on or will soon be foreclosed on in York County. He said he has 29 properties that are already or will soon be bank-owned, something he has never seen before in his 31-year real estate career.

"It looks like there's a lot in the pipeline," he said.

After a year of dealing with higher hay and grain prices and low reimbursements from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services for providing therapy riding lessons, Carter has resigned herself to the same fate encountered by millions of Americans affected by the subprime mortgage crisis.

"The (interest) rates have gone down. Why don't they just rewrite it? Why can't they just help me out," Carter said Tuesday afternoon, one day after a York County Sheriff's deputy delivered an eviction notice.

Carter said her mortgage lender began foreclosure proceedings earlier this year after she missed a few payments. She previously had a 30-year variable rate mortgage on the property before she refinanced it a year ago. Initially, the new mortgage increased her payment by $75 per month.

Then Carter learned in September that her monthly mortgage payment would increase from $1,500 to $1,728 per month on Nov. 1 after the variable rate jumped from 6.5 percent to 7.2 percent, she said. She didn't have any way of paying an extra $228 per month.

The cost of taking care of her horses — which Carter estimated at $10,000 per year — far exceeded the $1,300 per year she receives from Maine DHHS for state-sponsored therapeutic riding programs and the income raised through private riding lessons at $35 per hour. Carter said she also works part-time at the Double G Ranch Horse Supply & Tack Shop in Lebanon.

She received foreclosure papers from the York County Sheriff's office in mid-September and learned in October the bank had bought the property following the foreclosure.

What stunned Carter was that earlier the bank had indicated it would be willing to work with her to rewrite her mortgage so she could avoid foreclosure. But Carter she said the bank never gave her anything in writing stating that.

"I honestly thought that's what they would do. It never entered my mind that they would do this instead," Carter said.

Carter said she also tried to have a sympathetic buyer purchase the property out of foreclosure so that she and her animals could remain there. But the buyer walked away when the bank requested the buyer make an offer without the bank providing any information on the property's fair market value.

She, her 13-year-old son, Seth, six horses, two dogs and two cats must be gone from the premises by 3:30 p.m. today or she will be subject to arrest for trespassing.

"It's not just affecting me. It's myself, my son and all my animals," a tearful Carter said inside her kitchen.

Carter has made arrangements for her and her son and their horses to live at a friend's home in Lebanon located at the Double G Ranch tack shop. She said she has also made arrangements to have family members and friends take care of her chocolate Lab Chaize, her beagle Beau, and two cats, Lilly and Princess.

Carter said her stables have worked with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services in Augusta, the St. Charles Children's Home in Rochester, N.H., Sweetser and Waban Child Development Center, which is affiliated with Waban Projects, Inc., in Sanford, Maine. For the past four years she has offered therapeutic riding programs for children who have been abused and removed from their homes and children with special needs such as Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Carter said she has tried everything to save her home and stables. She said she contacted the Maine offices of U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and she contacted the Maine Bureau of Financial Institutions in Augusta, the state agency that regulates the state's banking industry.

She said the two senators' offices provided her with some telephone numbers, but little else.

Ann Beane, a consumer outreach specialist at the Maine bureau, said there was nothing the state agency could do to help homeowners like Carter.

"We have no jurisdiction over U.S. Bank, and even if we did we couldn't force them to" rewrite Carter's mortgage, Beane said.

She believes homeowners facing foreclosure should contact groups like NeighborWorks, HopeNow and Pine Tree Legal Assistance, which provides lawyers on a pro bono basis. She also said homeowners who question the way their mortgage lender carry out foreclosures should contact the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in Houston, Texas, which charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks.

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